Stability of intersecting families

Yang Huang, Yuejian Peng

Published 2022-05-11Version 1

The celebrated Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem \cite{EKR1961} states that the maximum intersecting $k$-uniform family on $[n]$ is a full star if $n\ge 2k+1$. Furthermore, Hilton-Milner \cite{HM1967} showed that if an intersecting $k$-uniform family on $[n]$ is not a subfamily of a full star, then its maximum size achieves only on a family isomorphic to $HM(n,k):= \Bigl\{G\in {[n] \choose k}: 1\in G, G\cap [2,k+1] \neq \emptyset \Bigr\} \cup \Bigl\{ [2,k+1] \Bigr\} $ if $n>2k$ and $k\ge 4$, and there is one more possibility in the case of $k=3$. Han and Kohayakawa \cite{HK2017} determined the maximum intersecting $k$-uniform family on $[n]$ which is neither a subfamily of a full star nor a subfamily of the extremal family in Hilton-Milner theorm, and they asked what is the next maximum intersecting $k$-uniform family on $[n]$. Kostochka and Mubayi \cite{KM2016} gave the answer for large enough $n$. In this paper, we are going to get rid of the requirement that $n$ is large enough in the result by Kostochka and Mubayi \cite{KM2016} and answer the question of Han and Kohayakawa \cite{HK2017}.